MOWERY: Berry and Worth are still necessary

They’re more like the couple of extra random extra pieces that you find in the bottom of the box, when you finish assembling that do-it-yourself, some-assembly-required toy or IKEA furniture.

You know you might need them eventually — they SEEM important — but you can’t for the life of you figure where they were supposed to go.

So you stick them on a shelf or in a drawer, in case you figure it out later.

That’s where Quintin Berry and Danny Worth — two integral parts of the Detroit Tigers’ 2012 American League championship squad — find themselves to start 2013, stuck in a drawer down in Triple-A Toledo, waiting for the organization to remember that they’re still necessary.

Oh, to be sure, there are other players on the Mud Hens roster — high-ceiling youngsters like relievers Bruce Rondon, Jose Ortega and Luke Putkonen, catcher Bryan Holaday and eventually outfielders Nick Castellanos and Avisail Garcia — who could factor into the Tigers’ plans this year, should the need arise.

But none of those guys are proven big-league commodities. Maybe only veterans like Shawn Hill and Kevin Russo — signed, like Berry was a year ago, for emergency depth, as a ready-made replacement part — can match Berry and Worth in that aspect. The organization knows, more or less, what it has in each of those players.

None of them, however, can match Berry and Worth — two of the final cuts from the Tigers’ 25-day roster in the week before Opening Day — in sheer disappointment, at this stage.

None of them were THIS CLOSE to starting the season in the big leagues.

None of them, realistically, had a shot.

That’s why you can’t really blame those two for being a bit bummed to be suiting up against Indianapolis, Gwinnett and Louisville, rather than Toronto, New York and Los Angeles.

Why you can’t blame them for being disappointed that they were apartment shopping in Perrysburg, Ohio, rather than Royal Oak.

Why you can’t blame them for being disappointed to be presented their AL championship rings in a ceremony at Toledo’s Fifth Third Field rather than at Comerica Park, with the rest of their teammates.

Why you can’t blame them for having to prove all over again that they belong.

Why you can’t blame them for a bit of early-season malaise.

“If you think that only happens in the first couple of weeks ... trust me, when it comes June or July, and those paychecks are not the same, and they understand what’s going on. This level, I’ve said it a million times, is the hardest level of baseball to play. When you start in T-ball, go to the big leagues, this is the hardest on you mentally, without a doubt. As the season goes on, that’s when it becomes harder to manage those emotions,” said Mud Hens coach Phil Nevin, admitting that playing that bit of amateur psychologist comes with his job description.

“The managing emotions part, at this level, is difficult.”

For manager Jim Leyland, making those two cuts might have been his most difficult task of the spring, given the emotions involved.

“I don’t get much of a thrill from breaking hearts,” he said at the time.

Both guys handled it professionally, as you’d expect, but it still stings.

The question is, for how long? Have they gotten over it yet?

“You have to. You have no choice,” Berry said last week, before a game in Toledo against Indianapolis, the Pirates Triple-A affiliate. “So I’m here, and I’m making the most of it, trying to get better. Going on the same ride a lot of guys are down here. There’s a lot of us that got sent down, so we’re all on the same page, pushing for each other, helping each other try to get better and get back.”

For Worth, ‘getting back’ has a whole different meaning. Sent out and recalled nine times last season, it seemed like his entire 2012 season was a turnstile, a blur of I-75 scenery as he shuttled back and forth.

A slick-fielding shortstop, who’d long ago shown the ability to play second and third, he was tested out at first base a couple of times this spring — just in case the roster shook out a certain way. The Tigers’ general manager, Dave Dombrowski, seems to be convinced that Worth could play left field in a pinch, too.

The question with the 27-year-old former second-round pick has always been the same, though: Will he hit?

After a 2012 season in which he hit .216 with the Tigers and .264 with the Hens, it appeared he’d figured out this spring why he hadn’t been hitting. Adding pounds of muscle didn’t necessarily mean that he was all of a sudden a home-run hitter.

“I’m just trying to have a simpler approach. Last year, I got out of my boundaries a little bit, trying to do too much, hit for too much power, which translates into hitting for no power,” Worth said during spring training of his work with hitting coach Lloyd McClendon. “Just trying to make it simple, use the whole field.”

His line of .333 with six doubles in Grapefruit League action this spring seemed to confirm he was correct.

But it didn’t guarantee him a spot on the Opening Day roster. Instead, the Tigers went with 33-year-old Ramon Santiago, to whom they owe $2.1 million this season, in the final year of a two-year contract.

Worth still had an option year, something the Tigers took advantage of.

“That’s tough on him. For a guy in his position, I’d imagine it’s pretty tough. He’s proven that he belongs as a big-league player. Whether that’s as a utility player, everyday player, that’s not for me to decide. But he’s proven he can play at the next level, and he’s done a LOT here at the Triple-A level. He’s been very successful for me the last couple of years. So, yeah, it’s tough on him,” Nevin said.

“That’s just being honest. I can’t imagine it being easy.

“You got a family, and you want to play in the big leagues. Right now, this is where he’s at. There could be worse places, obviously. I can imagine it would try on a guy like him right now, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

“But like I said, he’s been professional, he’s come in here every day, and he’s worked, and he’s going to be just fine here, like the other guys.

Worth left Wednesday’s game with a bruised heel, leaving him day-to-day, but even should he miss some time, that still won’t mitigate the fact that he’s a proven commodity. And given his 1,000-plus career plate appearances at the Triple-A level, there’s not a whole lot that he can still prove at Toledo.

“That was a little shock value with Danny coming down here — for a lot of people; I’m not going to say just for Danny it was. But that’s baseball. They understand the numbers, understand what’s there. And he understands — he’s not too far from being back there,” Nevin said, disregarding Worth’s statistically slow start with the Hens. “Obviously, he’s gone there and done great things. If someone were to go down now, I would have no problem — to be honest with you, I don’t look at these stats for quite a while. I think he’s swinging the bat better than those numbers show. And I would have no problem OK’ing, and sending him, and he’d go there and do just fine.”

For Berry, the climb was uphill, considering how overflowing the outfield was with viable options. It certainly didn’t help that he was just another left-handed bat, along with most of the rest.

It’s debatable whether or not his bout with patellar tendinitis early in camp played as big a role, though.

“A lot of people ask me that. I don’t think it had anything to do with it. I think that decision was already made, no matter what happened. I kind of just think that’s the direction they wanted to go with. Had more at-bats this spring than I did the spring before, and pretty much the exact same numbers, and everybody thought I was going to make the team that year, or I had a possibility. So I don’t think my knee had anything to do with it. I just stayed out a couple games,” he said.

“But I’m down here playing every day. I think if my knee had anything to do with it, I wouldn’t have come down here and been able to play every day.”

It’s a far cry from where he was just a year earlier, when he admitted in spring training just to get a crack at sticking at the Triple-A level.

“That’s exactly it. You get up there, you get an opportunity to play every day, get to the postseason and play, get to the World Series and play, and then everything changes. Your expectations change in yourself. You never want to take a step back. But that’s the name of the game. It is what it is,” Berry said.

“It just taught me it’s not all about where you start out. Never would have thought I was going to be in the situation I was in last year. Nobody really knew who I was, or really expected anything from me.

“It’s a better starting point this year than I was at last year, and look how that turned out. So hopefully something along the lines can happen again.”

The two of them will just have to wait and see.

Sooner or later, the Tigers will figure out where the parts go, and plug them in.

Matthew B. Mowery covers the Tigers for Digital First Media. Email him at matt.mowery@oakpress.com and follow him on Twitter @matthewbmowery.